Computers have become indispensable in storing, organizing, and analyzing information. One of the earliest ways for users to do this was by using a spreadsheet. Over time, many spreadsheet products have been developed that allow users to store, organize, and analyze information. The continuing growth of information economy creates a demand for more powerful spreadsheets.
The spreadsheet products have evolved over time. Initially, spreadsheets comprised a simple “grid” of cells containing user-entered numeric or text data and the results of basic arithmetic and mathematical functions. Modern spreadsheets allow user to adjust stored values and observe the effects on calculated or derived values. This makes spreadsheets useful for quickly investigating multiple, competing hypothetical scenarios without manual recalculation. Modern spreadsheets can have multiple interacting sheets and can display data in graphical form (e.g., charts), as well as text and numeric information. In addition to supporting basic arithmetic and mathematical functions, modern spreadsheets provide built-in functions and support third-party plugin functions for performing complex financial and statistical operations.
While spreadsheets are widely-used for quantitative modeling, they have deficiencies. The deficiencies include reliability as measured by the number of spreadsheets that contain errors. Other deficiencies include lack of auditing and revision control, and lack of security. The sheer volume of spreadsheets that may exist in an organization without adequate security, auditing, and error control can become overwhelming. For these and other reasons, collaboration on a spreadsheet can be tedious and error prone.
Despite these deficiencies, spreadsheets continue to be widely-used within organizations (e.g., businesses and corporations) for important quantitative modeling tasks. This continued use is not with the risk associated with deriving a materially incorrect value from a spreadsheet that is used to make a related domain decision such as, for example, the valuation of an asset, the determination financial accounts, the calculation of medicinal doses, the size of a load-bearing beam for structural engineering, etc. The risk arises principally from the action or inaction of individuals such as, for example, inputting erroneous or fraudulent data values in a spreadsheet, or omitting relevant updates to a spreadsheet such as, for example, out of date exchange rates.
The techniques herein address these issues.